by Sharon Sala
Edward beamed. “Good morning, dear lady.”
“The accommodations are superb,” Charlie said.
“Breakfast is serve yourself, buffet-style, but if there’s something else you’d rather have, Ruth will tell Chef,” Carter said.
Charlie eyed the brimming sideboard. “Considering the bowl of cold cereal that usually passes for my breakfast, there’ll be no need for requests. That is a feast.” Then he stepped back for Wyrick. “After you,” he said.
Wyrick’s eyes narrowed warningly as she passed him on the way to the buffet—then she saw waffles.
“I love waffles,” she said to no one in particular and picked up a warm plate. She started with bacon, then a full-size Belgian waffle, added butter and slathered the waffle with heated syrup. She poured herself a cup of coffee and returned to her seat.
Charlie took scrambled eggs and bacon, two pieces of buttered toast and his coffee, before sitting down beside her.
Within a couple of minutes, everyone had food and began eating. Conversation was light for a bit, and then Carter got down to business.
“Charlie, do you still want to speak to Jason this morning?”
“Yes, if he’s up to it.”
“I’ve spoken to the floor nurse,” Dina said. “He had a good night, and they had him up once this morning.”
“Great news!” Carter said. “After we’ve finished, I’ll notify Security that we’ll be needing an escort to and from the hospital.”
“Thanks,” Charlie said.
Wyrick got up and went back to the buffet for more bacon and a refill of coffee.
Charlie looked up as she came back to the table. “Good bacon, isn’t it?”
“Shut up,” Wyrick said and then obviously remembered they were supposed to have a truce.
Carter burst out laughing. “I love to see a woman enjoying her food.”
“I envy you,” Dina said. “You’re so tall and thin. You must have good genes.”
“Oh, I’m chock-full of all kinds of genes,” Wyrick said and popped the last bite of bacon into her mouth.
It was the tone of her voice that wiped the smile off Charlie’s face. He knew what bitter sounded like, and he knew what anger sounded like, and there was an underlying hint of both. It made him wonder what had happened to her when she worked for Universal Theorem.
Seventeen
After breakfast, Wyrick returned to her suite to work on the Wilma Short file, hoping to find a connection to whomever had paid her to go after Carter Dunleavy.
Charlie and Carter left the estate in one of the company cars driven by his chauffeur, with one security escort behind them, and one in front.
Once they reached the hospital, a two-man security team accompanied them inside and up to Jason’s room, where two more members of Carter’s security team were on guard just outside.
“Everything going okay?” Carter asked.
One of them nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Carter knocked, then opened the door and walked in.
The television was on. Jason was obviously drifting in and out of sleep, but when he heard the door open, he saw his uncle and smiled.
“Uncle Carter. So good to see you. Did you come to break me out of here?”
Carter laughed. “Not yet, son. Are you up to talking a bit? Charlie has some more questions.”
“Sure thing,” Jason said. “Ask away.”
“I’ll keep this brief,” Charlie said. “We’d be careless to assume that the attempt on your life is not connected to Carter, and I need to ask a few questions.”
“Okay, I’m ready,” Jason said.
“Do you have any personal or business enemies?”
“Nothing remotely like the ones Uncle Carter has. I have a couple of people who hated my guts in college, but that was at Yale and years ago.”
“I know you’re seeing Miranda Deutsch now. Are there any women from your past who hold grudges against you?”
“No. I’ve never had a serious relationship with anyone. Never been close to an engagement. Never brought any of them home to meet my family. They were just casual partners for social events. Oh...and I’m not seeing Miranda anymore, either.”
“When did that end?” Charlie asked.
“Yesterday morning.”
“Was it an amicable parting of the ways?”
“Not really.”
“What exactly do you mean by ‘not really’? Did you two have a fight?”
“I wasn’t fighting. I just told her I thought we needed to take a break from each other. She cursed at me like a sailor, then started screaming at me. I disconnected.”
Charlie frowned. “Okay, for the sake of clarity, how long between the time you two had this conversation, and the time you were shot?”
“I guess...two hours more or less.”
Carter had been quiet until then. “Charlie, what are you getting at?”
“Bear with me, Carter. Just a couple more questions, and then I’ll let Jason rest,” Charlie said.
“I’m okay,” Jason said.
“So, if I’m remembering correctly, everyone in the family would gain the same amount of shares if your uncle had been killed, right? I mean...no one profits more than another if it happens.”
“That’s right,” Jason said.
“And you are the person who’s been groomed to take his place, so it’s not like you had any new expectations, either, right?”
“Correct,” Carter replied.
“Yes, that’s been a given in the family for years,” Jason said.
“Okay, last question. Do people outside the family know this?”
“The people on the board know, of course,” Jason said. “Even though it’s not a secret, I have no idea if anyone else does.”
“Carter, what about you?” Charlie asked. “Is it common knowledge among the people you do business with?”
“Anyone who’s ever done business with us knows Jason will be the heir to this position, and he proved himself fully capable when I went into hiding. But as far as the inheritance angle goes, I doubt it,” he said.
“What about your girlfriends? Was Miranda Deutsch aware of that?” Charlie asked.
Jason’s brow knitted slightly. “I doubt it. We never discussed work or families when we were together.”
“Okay, that covers everything I need to know. I’ll fill Wyrick in on this, and see what she can do with it. Sometimes all she needs is that one tiny bit of info to break a case wide-open for me.”
“That’s quite an assistant you have,” Jason said.
Carter smiled. “You have no idea how freaking amazing she is.”
“And some days, aggravating as hell,” Charlie added.
The conversation ended with laughter.
But even after they’d said their goodbyes and were on their way back to the estate, Charlie’s thoughts were all over the place. He could see the puzzle pieces now, but none of them were fitting together. In most of the cases he worked, there was that one piece they had yet to find. Once they got it, everything else always fell into place.
That hadn’t happened here, not yet.
* * *
The Denver PD was in something of a pressure cooker. Two members of the Dunleavy family were under attack, and they couldn’t find a single lead as to who was doing it or why.
What they did know was that Wilma Short had been murdered. The autopsy had revealed a huge bruise on the back of her head, and DNA beneath her fingernails that wasn’t hers, nor did it match anything in the database.
All they knew about the attacks on Carter was what he’d told them, plus the lab test from the hospital stating traces of arsenic had been found in his system. As well, there was a report from the inspection on his vehicle when he’d lost his brakes coming down a mountain—and they’d found a small cut in the brake line.
Chief Forsythe had personally cleared Rom Delgado of any wrongdoing in helping Carter hide, and Carter had already recompensed the Denver PD for
the costs they’d incurred during the two weeks they’d been searching for him. But there were still no answers as to who was behind this.
Every precinct in the Denver area had received a BOLO from the central division regarding Jason Dunleavy’s shooting. Thanks to traffic cams, they had a make and model on the car, but no tag number because it had been smeared with mud.
The police knew the kind of gun the shooter had used from the bullet they took out of Jason’s shoulder, and they had a description of the tattoo sleeve on the shooter’s arm from an eyewitness account.
Like Charlie Dodge, all they needed was one break.
* * *
Dr. Wooten, the pathologist who’d done the initial autopsy two days ago on Buddy Boy Pierce, also wound up with the body of Rey Garza on his slab yesterday. After the autopsy, Wooten measured the distance between the eyebrows where the bullet went in, he realized it was the same measurement on Buddy Pierce’s body. The fact that they’d both been shot between the eyes within a millimeter of the same location was unusual. It made him curious, and so the next morning he checked the striations on the two bullets, and determined that the same gun had been used to kill both men.
At that point, Wooten made a call to the detectives working each case, and asked them to come down to the morgue.
Neither knew the other had been called until they both showed up and were taken into the morgue together.
“Detective Reed, Detective Spick, I’m Dr. Wooten, and thank you for coming. This may mean nothing, and then again, these bodies might connect to other similar cases you’re working that are still open.”
“What’s going on, Doc?” Detective Reed asked.
“Just let me show you first, and then we’ll talk,” Wooten said and led them to the lockers and opened two different drawers.
“That’s Buddy Pierce. He’s mine,” Detective Reed said.
“This is Rey Garza. He’s mine,” Detective Spick said, and then Reed and Spick looked at each other and shrugged.
“Same perfectly clean bullet hole between the eyes in the exact same place. Same caliber bullet,” Dr. Wooten said. “I have a bullet from Pierce and a bullet from Garza. Seems to me that they have the same striations. Find the gun, and you’ll likely find the killer of both men.”
They left the morgue more confused than they’d been before they got there. Now they were going to have to work up backgrounds on the two men to see what they had in common. It had to be something, considering the same gun was used to kill them.
* * *
When Detective Spick got to the precinct, he had reports to add to working files, his usual handful of messages and a few BOLOs sitting on his desk.
One of the reports concerned the preliminary autopsy report Dr. Wooten had done on Garza. Spick casually reviewed it, noting the mention of the sleeve of tattoos and the accompanying photos.
He put the copies in the case file and then went through the BOLOs. As he was reading them, he found one regarding the Jason Dunleavy case. The shooter they were looking for had a whole sleeve of tattoos on his left arm...and she’d described them as gang related in appearance.
He pulled the autopsy he’d just filed on Rey Garza and studied the photos again. They looked gang related to him. It was a long shot, but worth letting the detective know. Spick reached for the phone.
* * *
Bruner was writing up a report when his phone rang. He hit Save on his computer, then picked up the receiver.
“Detective Bruner, Homicide.”
“Detective Bruner, this is Detective Spick. I’m working a homicide on a man who was found murdered in his car out by Cherry Creek Reservoir. I was reading your BOLO regarding the Jason Dunleavy shooter, and my murder victim has a sleeve of tattoos on his left arm that look like gang images. He’s also left-handed, which would match the info on the BOLO. The name is Rey Garza, and that’s spelled R-E-Y.”
Bruner’s pulse kicked up as he reached for a pen and paper.
“Do you have photos of the tattoos?” Bruner asked.
“Yes. They’re in the file. We also recovered a gun from Garza’s car that’s the same make as the one you’re looking for in the Dunleavy shooting. I can’t prove that any of this is a match, but it looks good on the surface,” Spick said.
Bruner tapped his pen against the paper. “I would need a ballistics test on that gun, and pictures of the tattoos to show my witness.”
“I can ask the medical examiner’s office to send you the pictures, and get a ballistics test run for you,” Spick said.
“Chief Forsythe is breathing down all our necks to solve this,” Bruner said. “So thank you for the info, and let me know as soon as you get the ballistics test back.”
“No problem,” Spick said. “And there’s one more thing. The coroner called me and a Detective Reed from another precinct into the morgue at the same time because he found an unusual common denominator between my vic and another body he’d worked. While they’d both been killed with the same make of handgun, which isn’t all that surprising, it was the bullet holes between their eyes that caught his attention. He said the single shots that killed both vics was in the same exact place on their faces. Not even a millimeter of difference. Right between the eyes, with equal margins between the shots and the eyebrows. After that, he checked the striation on the bullets he pulled out of the vics, and they were a match to the same gun.”
“Wait! What was the name of Reed’s victim?” Bruner asked.
“Buddy Pierce, but he lived in a different part of the city from Rey Garza.”
“Okay, I’ll make a note and check it out,” Bruner said.
When the digital pictures Spick had requested arrived. Bruner took one look at them, then reached for the phone to call Megan Simmons, the witness who saw Jason’s shooter.
She answered quickly.
“This is Detective Bruner, Denver PD. May I speak to Megan Simmons?”
“This is Megan.”
“Would you be willing to come in and view a photo lineup of tattoos? We may have a lead to the Jason Dunleavy shooting.”
“I can be there within the hour.”
“Great,” Bruner said. “I’ll leave word at the front desk to have you escorted to an interview room.”
“All right. See you in a little while,” Megan said.
As soon as he hung up, he began picking out more photos. Now all he needed was for her to ID the tattoo that belonged to Rey Garza, and he might just have found his shooter.
Once he had the lineup and an interview room reserved, he glanced at the time. Megan Simmons would be here soon. He needed to let the front desk know where to bring his witness.
A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and an officer walked in with Megan Simmons.
“Detective Bruner, your witness is here.”
Bruner stood and quickly shook her hand. “Megan, thank you for coming at such short notice. Just have a seat here,” he said. “I want you to look through these photos and see if any of them fit the description of what you saw.”
Megan set her purse aside and calmly stepped up to examine them. Bruner was impressed by how she immediately removed three.
“None of these,” Megan said. “They’re too ornate, and I didn’t see any color on the shooter.” Then she reached for the one Detective Spick had just sent. “This looks like what I saw.”
“You’re sure?” Bruner asked.
She didn’t hesitate. “I’m sure. I’m a nurse. We’re trained to observe. Sometimes the smallest things will be the only warning we get before a patient starts to crash. And while I was watching the whole thing unfold, from Mr. Dunleavy slamming on the brakes to the other car flying through the intersection like the stoplight wasn’t even there, everything seemed to happen in slow motion. I wish I’d seen his face, but when I saw that arm come out of the open window, and then the gun in his hand, that’s where my focus stopped and stayed.”
“You’ve been a great help, more than you can im
agine. Wait a moment and I’ll walk you out.”
Bruner gathered up the photos, slipped them into a manila envelope and escorted her to the front door.
“Thank you, and have a safe trip home,” Bruner said.
“You’re welcome,” Megan said.
* * *
As soon as Charlie and Carter got back to the estate, Carter went to his office, and Charlie went upstairs with the new information. But when he found Wyrick in deep concentration, he hated to interrupt.
“I know you’re there,” Wyrick said. “I’m listening.”
“I’ll wait until—”
“I can do two things at once. Talk,” she said, her fingers flying over the keyboard.
“Jason Dunleavy broke up with Miranda Deutsch about two hours before he was shot. She didn’t take it well. She was screaming at him and cursing when he hung up. Just to tie up loose ends, when you run a background check on her, see if there’s any way to connect her to the cases on Carter and Jason.”
“Why would she want Carter gone if she’s dating Jason?” Wyrick asked, still typing.
Charlie was fascinated watching how fast her fingers moved, and almost forgot to answer.
“Oh...uh...it was a thought I had.”
“To the point of killing one rich man to marry another rich man in the same family? That’s mental illness, if you ask me, but duly noted,” Wyrick muttered. “With regard to Wilma Short. I found something.”
Charlie pulled up a chair and sat down at the table. “What did you find?” he asked.
“A large lump sum of money deposited into her mother’s bank account four months ago. Before the deposit, the only money that came in was the mother’s Social Security money, but it was used to pay part of her monthly care. After that deposit, Wilma began using it to pay for all her mother’s care.”
“How much was deposited?” Charlie asked.
“Half a million dollars,” Wyrick said. “But there’s no way to trace it. It was deposited as cash, and I haven’t been able to match up a withdrawal of that size to anyone we know.”